Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) studies are
designed to collect information by tracking adult offenders from the
point of entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest)
through final disposition, regardless of whether the offender is
convicted or acquitted. Information is provided on arrest, police
action, prosecutor action, level of charges, charges filed by the
prosecutor, type of counsel, pretrial status, type of trial, sentence
type, and sentence length. Thi... (more info)

Offender Based Transaction Statistics (OBTS) studies are
designed to collect information by tracking adult offenders from the
point of entry into the criminal justice system (typically by arrest)
through final disposition, regardless of whether the offender is
convicted or acquitted. Information is provided on arrest, police
action, prosecutor action, level of charges, charges filed by the
prosecutor, type of counsel, pretrial status, type of trial, sentence
type, and sentence length. This allows researchers to examine how the
criminal justice system processes offenders, to measure the changing
volume of offenders moving through the different segments of the
criminal justice system, to calculate processing time intervals
between major decision-making events, and to assess the changing
structure of the offender population.

A downloadable version of data for this study is available however, certain identifying information in the downloadable version may have been masked or edited to protect respondent privacy. Additional data not included in the downloadable version are available in a restricted version of this data collection. For more information about the differences between the downloadable data and the restricted data for this study, please refer to the codebook notes section of the PDF codebook. Users interested in obtaining restricted data must complete and sign a Restricted Data Use Agreement, describe the research project and data protection plan, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Dataset(s)

WARNING: This study is over 150MB in size and may take several minutes to download on a typical internet connection.

Universe:
Persons in the United States who have achieved adult
status (as specified by individual state laws) and who have been
processed for felonies by the police, prosecutors, or courts, whether
or not there is a final determination of guilt.

Data Types:
event/transaction data, and survey data

Data Collection Notes:

For reasons of confidentiality, the "day" variables in
the dates have been blanked in the public release version of the data.
Consequently, additional variables have been created to provide the
elapsed time between the day of arrest and the days of the police
disposition, the prosecutor/grand jury disposition, the final court
disposition, and the sentencing date.

Methodology

Data Source:

computerized court records

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed recodes and/or calculated derived variables.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1994-03-10

Version History:

2005-08-08 The data were reprocessed using
resupplied data. Old ICPSR administrative variables were removed. The
variables "Date of Arrest: Day," "Date of Police Disp: Day," "Date
Prosec Dispos: Day," "Date Final Court Disp: Day," and "Sentencing
Date: Day," previously removed from the data, have been included in
the data files. A public version of the data has been created in which
the Day variables are blanked and a restricted version of the data has
been created in which the Day variables have not been blanked. Also,
Part 2, which was an old SAS setup file, has been removed. The
codebook and all the SAS, SPSS, and Stata collection files have been
updated to reflect the changes.